The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08 eBook

Leo X died on December 1, 1521, a year after Raphael.
His successor, the humble and austere Adrian VI, knew
nothing about pictures, except those of Van Eyck and
Albert Duerer. His simple manners formed a striking
contrast to the ostentatious habits of Leo. During
his pontificate, all the great works were stopped
at Rome and slackened at Florence. While Michelangelo
was obscurely working at the library of San Lorenzo,
the great age of art was drawing to its close; Raphael
and Leonardo were dead, and their pupils were already
hurrying on to a rapid decadence.

Characters were beginning to decline at the same time
that talent did, and Michelangelo, who, as it were,
opened this grand era, was destined to survive alone,
like those lofty summits that first receive the morning
light, and which are still lit up while all around
has grown obscure and night is already profound.

BALBOA DISCOVERS THE PACIFIC

A.D. 1513

MANUEL JOSE QUINTANA

Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the Spanish soldier and discoverer
of the Pacific Ocean, was born in 1475, and died near
Darien, the scene of his principal achievement, probably
in 1517. Unfairly charged with conspiracy, after
rendering great services to his country, he was beheaded
just as he was completing preparations to explore
the “South Sea,” as he named the ocean
which he had discovered.

He first went to Darien from Espanola (Haiti) in 1510,
promoted a settlement, and was made its alcalde.
In 1512 Pasamonte, king’s treasurer at Santo
Domingo, commissioned him as governor. Balboa
undertook many explorations, and was usually on friendly
terms with the Indians, who told him of a great sea
lying to the south, and of a country (Peru) rich in
gold, far down the coast. He set out from Darien
September 1, 1513, to discover the great sea and the
country of which he thus heard. He had conquered
the Indian king Careta, whose friendship he gained
and whose daughter he married. He went by sea
to his father-in-law’s territory, and taking
with him some of the King’s Indians he moved
into the territory of the cacique Ponca, an enemy
of Careta.

Quintana, whose account follows, is the favorite historian
of this expedition. His Lives of Celebrated
Spaniards is regarded as one of the classics of
Spanish prose literature.

Ponca, not daring to await the coming of the allies,
took refuge in the mountains, abandoning his land
to the ravage and ruin prepared for it by the Indians
and Spaniards. Balboa, however, did not pursue
his success further at present; leaving to the future
the conquest, or, as he termed it, the “pacification”
of the interior, he returned to the coast, where it
was more for the advantage, security, and subsistence
of the colony to have his friends or his vassals stationed.